As a gimmick he chooses the last picture that the cinema featured, Samson and His Mighty Challenge (an Italian film, originally released in 1964 as Ercole, Sansone, Maciste e Ursus: gli invincibili).

This calls for desperate measures and McBain, his projectionist Sprocket and his publicist Lisa are forced to improvise voice-overs for the entire film with hilarious results.

Hercules Returns is a screen adaptation of the popular Australian live comedy show Double Take, conceived and performed by Des Mangan with Sally Patience.

The Double Take show, which began in Sydney in 1986, is part of the "dub parody" genre, in which ostensibly serious films are deliberately re-voiced in a satirical or spoof manner.

Typically seated at the back of the auditorium, using microphones plugged into the cinema's sound system, the Double Take team performed live comedic voice-overs of movies such as the American B-grade sci-fi film The Astro-Zombies and the 1960s Italian low-budget 'Sword-and-sandal' epic Ercole, Sansone, Maciste e Ursus gli invincibili.

He was so impressed that he purchased the rights to both the original Ercole film and Mangan's script, hired cinematographer and filmmmaker David Parker to help write a story to wrap around the Double Take routine, and financed the project with his own funds.